By Mar Roman, The Associated Press
Madrid, Spain (AP) -- Spanish police told the FBI all along that they doubted the fingerprints on a plastic bag containing detonators like those used in the Madrid train bombing belonged to the U.S. lawyer wrongly arrested in the case, an official said Wednesday.
The prints of a thumb and finger were only partial and ill-defined because the bag was plastic, the police official said in a phone interview, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Spanish police found only several points of coincidence between Portland, Oregon-area attorney Brandon Mayfield’s fingerprints and those on the bag, the official said, adding there should be at least 12 such similarities.
Suspected Islamic terrorists set off 10 backpacks of explosives in four commuter trains the morning of March 11 in or near downtown Madrid, killing 191 passengers or bystanders and injuring more than 2,000.
Fingerprints were found on a plastic bag that was in a van left near the Alcala de Henares train station, from where three of the four bombed trains had departed.
The fingerprints were sent to Interpol, and Spanish police reportedly met FBI agents in Madrid on April 21. The latter were convinced the print was Mayfield’s. The Spaniards weren’t.
On May 6, Mayfield, 37, was arrested as a material witness in the bombings. He always said he was innocent.
Last Thursday, Spanish forensics police disclosed they finally made their own match: an Algerian identified as Ouhnane Daoud. Within hours, Mayfield was released from jail and the FBI subsequently apologized.
Spanish police said the plastic bag never left Spain and that a digital copy was sent to Paris-based Interpol.
The official also noted Wednesday that police told the FBI there was no record of Mayfield having been in Spain recently.